The golden day was spoiled for Anne. Somehow, the Little Fellow had won her heart in their brief meeting. She and Lewis drove in silence down the Glencove Road and up the grassy lane. Carlo was lying on the stone before the blue door. He got up and came down over to them, as they descended from the buggy, licking Anne's hand and looking up at her with big wistful eyes as if asking for news of his little playmate. The door was open and in the dim room beyond they saw a man with his head bowed on the table.
At Anne's knock he started up and came to the door. She was shocked at the change in him. He was hollow-cheeked, haggard and unshaven, and his deep-set eyes flashed with a fitful fire.
She expected a repulse at first, but he seemed to recognize her, for he said listlessly,
"So you're back? The Little Fellow said you talked to him and kissed him. He liked you. I was sorry I'd been so churlish to you. What is it you want?"
"We want to show you something," said Anne gently.
"Will you come in and sit down?" he said drearily.
Without a word Lewis took the Little Fellow's picture from its wrappings and held it out to him. He snatched it up, gave it one amazed, hungry look, then dropped on his chair and burst into tears and sobs. Anne had never seen a man weep so before. She and Lewis stood in mute sympathy until he had regained his self-control.
"Oh, you don't know what this means to me," he said brokenly at last. "I hadn't any picture of him. And I'm not like other folks . . . I can't recall a face . . . I can't see faces as most folks can in their mind. It's been awful since the Little Fellow died. . . . I couldn't even remember what he looked like. And now you've brought me this . . . after I was so rude to you. Sit down . . . sit down. I wish I could express my thanks in some way. I guess you've saved my reason . . . maybe my life. Oh, miss, isn't it like him? You'd think he was going to speak. My dear Little Fellow! How am I going
to live without him? I've nothing to live for now. First his mother . . . now him."
"He was a dear little lad," said Anne tenderly.
"That he was. Little Teddy . . . Theodore, his mother named him . . . her 'gift of Gods' she said he was. And he was so patient and never complained. Once he smiled up in my face and said, 'Dad, I think you've been mistaken in one thing . . . just one. I guess there is a heaven, isn't there? Isn't there, Dad?' I said to him, yes, there was. . . . God forgive me for ever trying to teach him anything else. He smiled again, contented like, and said, 'Well, Dad, I'm going there and Mother and God are there, so I'll be pretty well off. But I'm worried about you, Dad. You'll be so awful lonesome without me. But just do the best you can and be polite to folks and come to us by and by.' He made me promise I'd try, but when he was gone I couldn't stand the blankness of it. I'd have gone mad if you hadn't brought me this. It won't be so hard now."
He talked about his Little Fellow for some time, as if he found relief and pleasure in it. His reserve and gruffness seemed to have fallen from him like a garment. Finally Lewis produced the small faded photograph of himself and showed it to him.
"Have you ever seen anybody who looked like that, Mr. Armstrong?" asked Anne.
Mr. Armstrong peered at it in perplexity.
"It's awful like the Little Fellow," he said at last. "Whose might it be?"
"Mine," said Lewis, "when I was seven years old. It was because of the strange resemblance to Teddy that Miss Shirley made me bring it to show you. I thought it possible that you and I or the Little Fellow might be some distant relation. My name is Lewis Allen and my father was George Allen. I was born in New Brunswick."
James Armstrong shook his head. Then he said,
"What was your mother's name?"
"Mary Gardiner."
James Armstrong looked at him for a moment in silence.
"She was my half-sister," he said at last. "I hardly knew her . . . never saw her but once. I was brought up in an uncle's family after my father's death. My mother married again and moved away. She came to see me once and brought her little daughter. She died soon after and I never saw my half-sister again. When I came over to the Island to live, I lost all trace of her. You are my nephew and the Little Fellow's cousin."
This was surprising news to a lad who had fancied himself alone in the world. Lewis and Anne
spent the whole evening with Mr. Armstrong and found him to be a well-read and intelligent man. Somehow, they both took a liking to him. His former inhospitable reception was quite forgotten and they saw only the real worth of the character and temperament below the unpromising shell that had hitherto concealed them.
"Of course the Little Fellow couldn't have loved his father so much if it hadn't been so," said Anne, as she and Lewis drove back to Windy Poplars through the sunset.
When Lewis Allen went the next week-end to see his uncle, the latter said to him,
"Lad, come and live with me. You are my nephew and I can do well for you . . . what I'd have done for my Little Fellow if he'd lived. You're alone in the world and so am I. I need you. I'll grow hard and bitter again if I live here alone. I want you to help me keep my promise to the Little Fellow. His place is empty. Come you and fill it."
"Thank you, Uncle; I'll try," said Lewis, holding out his hand.
"And bring that teacher of yours here once in a while. I like that girl. The Little Fellow liked her. 'Dad,' he said to me, 'I didn't think I'd ever like anybody but you to kiss me, but I liked it when she did. There was something in her eyes, Dad.'"
"The old porch thermometer says it's zero and the new side-door one says it's ten above," remarked Anne, one frosty December night. "So I don't know whether to take my muff or not."
"Better go by the old thermometer," said Rebecca Dew cautiously. "It's probably more used to our climate. Where are you going this cold night, anyway?"
"I'm going round to Temple Street to ask Katherine Brooke to spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables."
"You'll spoil your holidays, then," said Rebecca Dew solemnly. "She'd go about snubbing the angels, that one . . . that is, if she ever condescended to enter heaven. And the worst of it is, she's proud of her bad manners . . . thinks it shows her strength of mind no doubt!"
"My brain agrees with every word you say but my heart simply won't," said Anne. "I feel, in spite of everything, that Katherine Brooke is only a shy, unhappy girl under her disagreeable rind. I can never make any headway with her in Summerside, but if I can get her to Green Gables I believe it
will thaw her out."
"You won't get her. She won't go," predicted Rebecca Dew. "Probably she'll take it as an insult to be asked . . . think you're offering her charity. We asked her here once to Christmas dinner . . . the year afore you came . . . you remember, Mrs. MacComber, the year we had two turkeys give us and didn't know how we was to get 'em et . . . and all she said was, 'No, thank you. If there's anything I hate, it's the word Christmas!'"
"But that is so dreadful . . . hating Christmas! Something has to be done, Rebecca Dew. I'm going to ask her and I've a queer feeling in my thumbs that tells me she will come."
"Somehow," said Rebecca Dew reluctantly, "when you say a thing is going to happen, a body believes it will. You haven't got a second sight, have you? Captain MacComber's mother had it. Useter give me the creeps."
"I don't think I have anything that need give you creeps. It's only just . . . I've had a feeling for some time that Katherine Brooke is almost crazy with loneliness under her bitter outside and that my invitation will come pat to the psychological moment, Rebecca Dew."
"I am not a B.A.," said Rebecca with awful humility, "and I do not deny your right to use words I cannot always understand. Neither do I deny that you can wind people round your little finger. Look how you managed the Pringles. But I do say I pity you if you take that iceberg and nutmeg grater combined home with you for Christmas."
Anne was by no means as confident as she pretended to be during her walk to Temple Street. Katherine Brooke had really been unbearable of late. Again and again Anne, rebuffed, had said, as grimly as Poe's raven, "Nevermore." Only yesterday Katherine had been positively insulting at a staff meeting. But in an unguarded moment Anne had seen something looking out of the older girl's eyes . . . a passionate, half-frantic something like a caged creature mad with discontent. Anne spent the first half of the night trying to decide whether to invite Katherine Brooke to Green Gables or not. Finally she fell asleep with her mind irrevocably made up.
Katherine's landlady showed Anne into the parlor and shrugged a fat shoulder when she asked for Miss Brooke.
"I'll tell her you're here but I dunno if she'll come down. She's sulking. I told her at dinner tonight that Mrs. Rawlins says its scandalous the way she dresses, for a teacher in Summerside High, and she took it high and mighty as usual."
"I don't think you should have told Miss Brooke that," said Anne reproachfully.
"But I thought she ought to know," said Mrs. Dennis somewhat waspishly.
"Did you also think she ought to know that the Inspector said she was one of the best teachers in
the Maritimes?" asked Anne. "Or didn't you know it?"
"Oh, I heard it. But she's stuck-up enough now without making her any worse. Proud's no name for it . . . though what she's got to be proud of, I dunno. Of course she was mad anyhow tonight because I'd said she couldn't have a dog. She's took a notion into her head she'd like to have a dog. Said she'd pay for his rations and see he was no bother. But what'd I do with him when she was in school? I put my foot down. 'I'm boarding no dogs,' sez I."
"Oh, Mrs. Dennis, won't you let her have a dog? He wouldn't bother you . . . much. You could keep him in the basement while she was in school. And a dog really is such a protection at night. I wish you would . . . please."
There was always something about Anne Shirley's eyes when she said "please" that people found hard to resist. Mrs. Dennis, in spite of fat shoulders and a meddlesome tongue, was not unkind at heart. Katherine Brooke simply got under her skin at times with her ungracious ways.
"I dunno why you should worry as to her having a dog or not. I didn't know you were such friends. She hasn't any friends. I never had such an unsociable boarder."
"I think that is why she wants a dog, Mrs. Dennis. None of us can live without some kind of companionship."
"Well, it's the first human thing I've noticed about her," said Mrs. Dennis. "I dunno's I have any awful objection to a dog, but she sort of vexed me with her sarcastic way of asking . . . 'I s'pose you wouldn't consent if I asked you if I might have a dog, Mrs. Dennis,' she sez, haughty like. Set her up with it! 'You're s'posing right,' sez I, as haughty as herself. I don't like eating my words any more than most people, but you can tell her she can have a dog if she'll guarantee he won't misbehave in the parlor."
Anne did not think the parlor could be much worse if the dog did misbehave. She eyed the dingy lace curtains and the hideous purple roses on the carpet with a shiver.
"I'm sorry for any one who has to spend Christmas in a boarding-house like this," she thought. "I don't wonder Katherine hates the word. I'd like to give this place a good airing . . . it smells of a thousand meals. Why does Katherine go on boarding here when she has a good salary?"
"She says you can come up," was the message Mrs. Dennis brought back, rather dubiously, for Miss Brooke had run true to form.
The narrow, steep stair was repellent. It didn't want you. Nobody would go up who didn't have to. The linoleum in the hall was worn to shreds. The little back hall-bedroom where Anne presently found herself was even more cheerless than the parlor. It was lighted by one glaring unshaded gas jet. There was an iron bed with a valley in the middle of it and a narrow, sparsely draped window looking out on a backyard garden where a large crop of tin cans flourished. But beyond it was a
marvelous sky and a row of lombardies standing out against long, purple, distant hills.
"Oh, Miss Brooke, look at that sunset," said Anne rapturously from the squeaky, cushionless rocker to which Katherine had ungraciously pointed her. "I've seen a good many sunsets," said the latter coldly, without moving. ("Condescending to me
with your sunsets!" she thought bitterly.)
"You haven't seen this one. No two sunsets are alike. Just sit down here and let us let it sink into our souls," said Anne. Thought Anne, "Do you ever say anything pleasant?" "Don't be ridiculous, please." The most insulting words in the world! With an added edge of insult in Katherine's contemptuous
tones. Anne turned from her sunset and looked at Katherine, much more than half inclined to get up and walk out. But Katherine's eyes looked a trifle strange. Had she been crying? Surely not . . . you couldn't imagine Katherine Brooke crying.
"You don't make me feel very welcome," Anne said slowly.
"I can't pretend things. I haven't your notable gift for doing the queen act . . . saying exactly the right thing to every one. You're not welcome. What sort of room is this to welcome any one to?" Katherine made a scornful gesture at the faded walls, the shabby bare chairs and the wobbly
dressing-table with its petticoat of limp muslin. "It isn't a nice room, but why do you stay here if you don't like it?" "Oh . . . why . . . Why? You wouldn't understand. It doesn't matter. I don't care what anybody
thinks. What brought you here tonight? I don't suppose you came just to soak in the sunset." "I came to ask if you would spend the Christmas holidays with me at Green Gables." ("Now," thought Anne, "for another broadside of sarcasm! I do wish she'd sit down at least. She
just stands there as if waiting for me to go.") But there was silence for a moment. Then Katherine said slowly, "Why do you ask me? It isn't because you like me . . . even you couldn't pretend that." "It's because I can't bear to think of any human being spending Christmas in a place like this," said
Anne candidly. The sarcasm came then.
"Oh, I see. A seasonable outburst of charity. I'm hardly a candidate for that yet, Miss Shirley."
Anne got up. She was out of patience with this strange, aloof creature. She walked across the room and looked Katherine squarely in the eye. "Katherine Brooke, whether you know it or not, what you want is a good spanking."
They gazed at each other for a moment.
"It must have relieved you to say that," said Katherine. But somehow the insulting tone had gone out of her voice. There was even a faint twitch at the corner of her mouth.
"It has," said Anne. "I've been wanting to tell you just that for some time. I didn't ask you to Green Gables out of charity . . . you know that perfectly well. I told you my true reason. Nobody ought to spend Christmas here . . . the very idea is indecent."
"You asked me to Green Gables just because you are sorry for me."
"I am sorry for you. Because you've shut out life . . . and now life is shutting you out. Stop, it, Katherine. Open your doors to life . . . and life will come in."
"The Anne Shirley version of the old bromide, 'If you bring a smiling visage to the glass you meet a smile,'" said Katherine with a shrug.
"Like all bromides, that's absolutely true. Now, are you coming to Green Gables or are you not?"
"What would you say if I accepted . . . to yourself, not to me?"
"I'd say you were showing the first faint glimmer of common sense I'd ever detected in you," retorted Anne.
Katherine laughed . . . surprisingly. She walked across to the window, scowled at the fiery streak which was all that was left of the scorned sunset and then turned.
"Very well . . . I'll go. Now you can go through the motions of telling me you're delighted and that we'll have a jolly time."
"I am delighted. But I don't know if you'll have a jolly time or not. That will depend a good deal on yourself, Miss Brooke."
"Oh, I'll behave myself decently. You'll be surprised. You won't find me a very exhilarating guest, I suppose, but I promise you I won't eat with my knife or insult people when they tell me it's a fine day. I tell you frankly that the only reason I'm going is because even I can't stick the thought of spending the holidays here alone. Mrs. Dennis is going to spend Christmas week with her
daughter in Charlottetown. It's a bore to think of getting my own meals. I'm a rotten cook. So much for the triumph of matter over mind. But will you give me your word of honor that you won't wish me a merry Christmas? I just don't want to be merry at Christmas."
"I won't. But I can't answer for the twins."
"I'm not going to ask you to sit down here . . . you'd freeze . . . but I see that there's a very fine moon in place of your sunset and I'll walk home with you and help you to admire it if you like."
"I do like," said Anne, "but I want to impress on your mind that we have much finer moons in Avonlea."
"So she's going?" said Rebecca Dew as she filled Anne's hot-water bottle. "Well, Miss Shirley, I hope you'll never try to induce me to turn Mohammedan . . . because you'd likely succeed. Where is That Cat? Out frisking round Summerside and the weather at zero."
"Not by the new thermometer. And Dusty Miller is curled up on the rocking-chair by my stove in the tower, snoring with happiness."
"Ah well," said Rebecca Dew with a little shiver as she shut the kitchen door, "I wish every one in the world was as warm and sheltered as we are tonight."
Anne did not know that a wistful little Elizabeth was watching out of one of the mansard windows of The Evergreens as she drove away from Windy Poplars . . . an Elizabeth with tears in her eyes who felt as if everything that made life worth living had gone out of her life for the time being and that she was the very Lizziest of Lizzies. But when the livery sleigh vanished from her sight around the corner of Spook's Lane Elizabeth went and knelt down by her bed.
"Dear God," she whispered, "I know it isn't any use to ask You for a merry Christmas for me because Grandmother and The Woman couldn't be merry, but please let my dear Miss Shirley have a merry, merry Christmas and bring her back safe to me when it's over.
"Now," said Elizabeth, getting up from her knees, "I've done all that I can."
Anne was already tasting Christmas happiness. She fairly sparkled as the train left the station. The ugly streets slipped past her . . . she was going home . . . home to Green Gables. Out in the open country the world was all golden-white and pale violet, woven here and there with the dark magic
of spruces and the leafless delicacy of birches. The low sun behind the bare woods seemed rushing through the trees like a splendid god, as the train sped on. Katherine was silent but did not seem ungracious.
"Don't expect me to talk," she had warned Anne curtly.
"I won't. I hope you don't think I'm one of those terrible people who make you feel that you have to talk to them all the time. We'll just talk when we feel like it. I admit I'm likely to feel like it a good part of the time, but you're under no obligation to take any notice of what I'm saying."
Davy met them at Bright River with a big two-seated sleigh full of furry robes . . . and a bear hug for Anne. The two girls snuggled down in the back seat. The drive from the station to Green Gables had always been a very pleasant part of Anne's week-ends home. She always recalled her first drive home from Bright River with Matthew. That had been in spring and this was December, but everything along the road kept saying to her, "Do you remember?" The snow crisped under the runners; the music of the bells tinkled through the ranks of tall pointed firs, snow-laden. The White Way of Delight had little festoons of stars tangled in the trees. And on the last hill but one they saw the great gulf, white and mystical under the moon but not yet ice-bound.
"There's just one spot on this road where I always feel suddenly . . . 'I'm home,'" said Anne. "It's the top of the next hill, where we'll see the lights of Green Gables. I'm just thinking of the supper Marilla will have ready for us. I believe I can smell it here. Oh, it's good . . . good . . . good to be home again!"
At Green Gables every tree in the yard seemed to welcome her back . . . every lighted window was beckoning. And how good Marilla's kitchen smelled as they opened the door. There were hugs and exclamations and laughter. Even Katherine seemed somehow no outsider, but one of them. Mrs. Rachel Lynde had set her cherished parlor lamp on the supper-table and lighted it. It was really a hideous thing with a hideous red globe, but what a warm rosy becoming light it cast over everything! How warm and friendly were the shadows! How pretty Dora was growing! And Davy really seemed almost a man.
There was news to tell. Diana had a small daughter . . . Josie Pye actually had a young man . . . and Charlie Sloane was said to be engaged. It was all just as exciting as news of empire could have been. Mrs. Lynde's new patchwork quilt, just completed, containing five thousand pieces, was on display and received its meed of praise.
"When you come home, Anne," said Davy, "everything seems to come alive."
"Ah, this is how life should be," purred Dora's kitten.
"I've always found it hard to resist the lure of a moonlight night," said Anne after supper. "How about a snow-shoe tramp, Miss Brooke? I think that I've heard that you snowshoe."
"Yes . . . it's the only thing I can do . . . but I haven't done it for six years," said Katherine with a shrug.
Anne rooted out her snow-shoes from the garret and Davy shot over to Orchard Slope to borrow an old pair of Diana's for Katherine. They went through Lover's Lane, full of lovely tree shadows, and across fields where little fir trees fringed the fences and through woods which were full of secrets they seemed always on the point of whispering to you but never did . . . and through open glades that were like pools of silver.
They did not talk or want to talk. It was as if they were afraid to talk for fear of spoiling something beautiful. But Anne had never felt so near Katherine Brooke before. By some magic of its own the winter night had brought them together . . . almost together but not quite.
When they came out to the main road and a sleigh flashed by, bells ringing, laughter tinkling, both girls gave an involuntary sigh. It seemed to both that they were leaving behind a world that had nothing in common with the one to which they were returning . . . a world where time was not . . . which was young with immortal youth . . . where souls communed with each other in some medium that needed nothing so crude as words.
"It's been wonderful," said Katherine so obviously to herself that Anne made no response.
They went down the road and up the long Green Gables lane but just before they reached the yard gate, they both paused as by a common impulse and stood in silence, leaning against the old mossy fence and looked at the brooding, motherly old house seen dimly through its veil of trees. How beautiful Green Gables was on a winter night!
Below it the Lake of Shining Waters was locked in ice, patterned around its edges with tree shadows. Silence was everywhere, save for the staccato clip of a horse trotting over the bridge. Anne smiled to recall how often she had heard that sound as she lay in her gable room and pretended to herself that it was the gallop of fairy horses passing in the night.
Suddenly another sound broke the stillness.
"Katherine . . . you're . . . why, you're not crying!"
Somehow, it seemed impossible to think of Katherine crying. But she was. And her tears suddenly humanized her. Anne no longer felt afraid of her.
"Katherine . . . dear Katherine . . . what is the matter? Can I help?"
"Oh . . . you can't understand!" gasped Katherine. "Things have always been made easy for you. You . . . you seem to live in a little enchanted circle of beauty and romance. 'I wonder what delightful discovery I'll make today' . . . that seems to be your attitude to life, Anne. As for me, I've forgotten how to live . . . no, I never knew how. I'm . . . I'm like a creature caught in a trap. I can
never get out . . . and it seems to me that somebody is always poking sticks at me through the bars. And you . . . you have more happiness than you know what to do with . . . friends everywhere, a lover! Not that I want a lover . . . I hate men . . . but if I died tonight, not one living soul would miss me. How would you like to be absolutely friendless in the world?"
Katherine's voice broke in another sob.
"Katherine, you say you like frankness. I'm going to be frank. If you are as friendless as you say, it is your own fault. I've wanted to be friends with you. But you've been all prickles and stings."
"Oh, I know . . . I know. How I hated you when you came first! Flaunting your circlet of pearls . . ."
"Katherine, I didn't 'flaunt' it!"
"Oh, I suppose not. That's just my natural hatefulness. But it seemed to flaunt itself . . . not that I envied you your beau . . . I've never wanted to be married . . . I saw enough of that with father and mother . . . but I hated your being over me when you were younger than I . . . I was glad when the Pringles made trouble for you. You seemed to have everything I hadn't . . . charm . . . friendship . . . youth. Youth! I never had anything but starved youth. You know nothing about it. You don't know . . . you haven't the least idea what it is like not to be wanted by any one . . . any one!"
"Oh, haven't I?" cried Anne.
In a few poignant sentences she sketched her childhood before coming to Green Gables.
"I wish I'd known that," said Katherine. "It would have made a difference. To me you seemed one of the favorites of fortune. I've been eating my heart out with envy of you. You got the position I wanted . . . oh, I know you're better qualified than I am, but there it was. You're pretty . . . at least you make people believe you're pretty. My earliest recollection is of some one saying, 'What an ugly child!' You come into a room delightfully . . . oh, I remember how you came into school that first morning. But I think the real reason I've hated you so is that you always seemed to have some secret delight . . . as if every day of life was an adventure. In spite of my hatred there were times when I acknowledged to myself that you might just have come from some far-off star."
"Really, Katherine, you take my breath with all these compliments. But you don't hate me any longer, do you? We can be friends now."
"I don't know . . . I've never had a friend of any kind, much less one of anything like my own age. I don't belong anywhere . . . never have belonged. I don't think I know how to be a friend. No, I don't hate you any longer . . . I don't know how I feel about you . . . oh, I suppose it's your noted charm beginning to work on me. I only know that I feel I'd like to tell you what my life has been like. I could never have told you if you hadn't told me about your life before you came to Green Gables. I want you to understand what has made me as I am. I don't know why I should want you
to understand . . . but I do."
"Tell me, Katherine dear. I do want to understand you."
"You do know what it is like not to be wanted, I admit . . . but not what it is like to know that your father and mother don't want you. Mine didn't. They hated me from the moment I was born . . . and before . . . and they hated each other. Yes, they did. They quarreled continually . . . just mean, nagging, petty quarrels. My childhood was a nightmare. They died when I was seven and I went to live with Uncle Henry's family. They didn't want me either. They all looked down on me because I was 'living on their charity.' I remember all the snubs I got . . . every one. I can't remember a single kind word. I had to wear my cousins' castoff clothes. I remember one hat in particular . . . it made me look like a mushroom. And they made fun of me whenever I put it on. One day I tore it off and threw it on the fire. I had to wear the most awful old tam to church all the rest of the winter. I never even had a dog . . . and I wanted one so. I had some brains . . . I longed so for a B.A. course . . . but naturally I might just as well have yearned for the moon. However, Uncle Henry agreed to put me through Queen's if I would pay him back when I got a school. He paid my board in a miserable third-rate boarding-house where I had a room over the kitchen that was ice cold in winter and boiling hot in summer, and full of stale cooking smells in all seasons. And the clothes I had to wear to Queen's! But I got my license and I got the second room in Summerside High . . . the only bit of luck I've ever had. Even since then I've been pinching and scrimping to pay Uncle Henry . . . not only what he spent putting me through Queen's, but what my board through all the years I lived there cost him. I was determined I would not owe him one cent. That is why I've boarded with Mrs. Dennis and dressed shabbily. And I've just finished paying him. For the first time in my life I feel free. But meanwhile I've developed the wrong way. I know I'm unsocial . . . I know I can never think of the right thing to say. I know it's my own fault that I'm always neglected and overlooked at social functions. I know I've made being disagreeable into a fine art. I know I'm sarcastic. I know I'm regarded as a tyrant by my pupils. I know they hate me. Do you think it doesn't hurt me to know it? They always look afraid of me . . . I hate people who look as if they were afraid of me. Oh, Anne . . . hate's got to be a disease with me. I do want to be like other people . . . and I never can now. That is what makes me so bitter."
"Oh, but you can!" Anne put her arm about Katherine. "You can put hate out of your mind . . . cure yourself of it. Life is only beginning for you now . . . since at last you're quite free and independent. And you never know what may be around the next bend in the road."
"I've heard you say that before . . . I've laughed at your 'bend in the road.' But the trouble is there aren't any bends in my road. I can see it stretching straight out before me to the sky-line . . . endless monotony. Oh, does life ever frighten you, Anne, with its blankness . . . its swarms of cold, uninteresting people? No, of course it doesn't. You don't have to go on teaching all the rest of your life. And you seem to find everybody interesting, even that little round red being you call Rebecca Dew. The truth is, I hate teaching . . . and there's nothing else I can do. A school-teacher is simply a slave of time. Oh, I know you like it . . . I don't see how you can. Anne, I want to travel. It's the one thing I've always longed for. I remember the one and only picture that hung on the wall of my attic room at Uncle Henry's . . . a faded old print that had been discarded from the other rooms
with scorn. It was a picture of palms around a spring in the desert, with a string of camels marching away in the distance. It literally fascinated me. I've always wanted to go and find it . . . I want to see the Southern Cross and the Taj Mahal and the pillars of Karnak. I want to know . . . not just believe . . . that the world is round. And I can never do it on a teacher's salary. I'll just have to go on forever, prating of King Henry the Eighth's wives and the inexhaustible resources of the Dominion."
Anne laughed. It was safe to laugh now, for the bitterness had gone out of Katherine's voice. It sounded merely rueful and impatient.
"Anyhow, we're going to be friends . . . and we're going to have a jolly ten days here to begin our friendship. I've always wanted to be friends with you, Katherine . . . spelled with a K! I've always felt that underneath all your prickles was something that would make you worth while as a friend."
"So that is what you've really thought of me? I've often wondered. Well, the leopard will have a go at changing its spots if it's at all possible. Perhaps it is. I can believe almost anything at this Green Gables of yours. It's the first place I've ever been in that felt like a home. I should like to be more like other people . . . if it isn't too late. I'll even practice a sunny smile for that Gilbert of yours when he arrives tomorrow night. Of course I've forgotten how to talk to young men . . . if I ever knew. He'll just think me an old-maid gooseberry. I wonder if, when I go to bed tonight, I'll feel furious with myself for pulling off my mask and letting you see into my shivering soul like this."
"No, you won't. You'll think, 'I'm glad she's found out I'm human.' We're going to snuggle down among the warm fluffy blankets, probably with two hot-water bottles, for likely Marilla and Mrs. Lynde will each put one in for us for fear the other has forgotten it. And you'll feel deliciously sleepy after this walk in the frosty moonshine . . . and first thing you'll know, it will be morning and you'll feel as if you were the first person to discover that the sky is blue. And you'll grow learned in lore of plum puddings because you're going to help me make one for Tuesday . . . a great big plummy one."
Anne was amazed at Katherine's good looks when they went in. Her complexion was radiant after her long walk in the keen air and color made all the difference in the world to her.
"Why, Katherine would be handsome if she wore the right kind of hats and dresses," reflected Anne, trying to imagine Katherine with a certain dark, richly red velvet hat she had seen in a Summerside shop, on her black hair and pulled over her amber eyes. "I've simply got to see what can be done about it."
Saturday and Monday were full of gay doings at Green Gables. The plum pudding was concocted and the Christmas tree brought home. Katherine and Anne and Davy and Dora went to the woods for it . . . a beautiful little fir to whose cutting down Anne was only reconciled by the fact that it was in a little clearing of Mr. Harrison's which was going to be stumped and plowed in the spring anyhow.
They wandered about, gathering creeping spruce and ground pine for wreaths . . . even some ferns that kept green in a certain deep hollow of the woods all winter . . . until day smiled back at night over white-bosomed hills and they came back to Green Gables in triumph . . . to meet a tall young man with hazel eyes and the beginnings of a mustache which made him look so much older and maturer that Anne had one awful moment of wondering if it were really Gilbert or a stranger.
Katherine, with a little smile that tried to be sarcastic but couldn't quite succeed, left them in the parlor and played games with the twins in the kitchen all the evening. To her amazement she found she was enjoying it. And what fun it was to go down cellar with Davy and find that there were really such things as sweet apples still left in the world.
Katherine had never been in a country cellar before and had no idea what a delightful, spooky, shadowy place it could be by candle-light. Life already seemed warmer. For the first time it came home to Katherine that life might be beautiful, even for her.
Davy made enough noise to wake the Seven Sleepers, at an unearthly hour Christmas morning, ringing an old cowbell up and down the stairs. Marilla was horrified at his doing such a thing when there was a guest in the house, but Katherine came down laughing. Somehow, an odd camaraderie had sprung up between her and Davy. She told Anne candidly that she had no use for the impeccable Dora but that Davy was somehow tarred with her own brush.
They opened the parlor and distributed the gifts before breakfast because the twins, even Dora, couldn't have eaten anything if they hadn't. Katherine, who had not expected anything except, perhaps, a duty gift from Anne, found herself getting presents from every one. A gay, crocheted afghan from Mrs. Lynde . . . a sachet of orris root from Dora . . . a paper-knife from Davy . . . a basketful of tiny jars of jam and jelly from Marilla . . . even a little bronze chessy cat for a paper-weight from Gilbert.
And, tied under the tree, curled up on a bit of warm and woolly blanket, a dear little brown-eyed puppy, with alert, silken ears and an ingratiating tail. A card tied to his neck bore the legend, "From Anne, who dares, after all, to wish you a Merry Christmas."
Katherine gathered his wriggling little body up in her arms and spoke shakily.
"Anne . . . he's a darling! But Mrs. Dennis won't let me keep him. I asked her if I might get a dog and she refused."
"I've arranged it all with Mrs. Dennis. You'll find she won't object. And, anyway, Katherine, you're not going to be there long. You must find a decent place to live, now that you've paid off what you thought were your obligations. Look at the lovely box of stationery Diana sent me. Isn't it fascinating to look at the blank pages and wonder what will be written on them?"
Mrs. Lynde was thankful it was a white Christmas . . . there would be no fat graveyards when Christmas was white . . . but to Katherine it seemed a purple and crimson and golden Christmas. And the week that followed was just as beautiful. Katherine had often wondered bitterly just what it would be like to be happy and now she found out. She bloomed out in the most astonishing way. Anne found herself enjoying their companionship.
"To think I was afraid she would spoil my Christmas holiday!" she reflected in amazement.
"To think," said Katherine to herself, "that I was on the verge of refusing to come here when Anne invited me!"
They went for long walks . . . through Lover's Lane and the Haunted Wood, where the very silence seemed friendly . . . over hills where the light snow whirled in a winter dance of goblins . . . through old orchards full of violet shadows . . . through the glory of sunset woods. There were no birds to chirp or sing, no brooks to gurgle, no squirrels to gossip. But the wind made occasional music that had in quality what it lacked in quantity.
"One can always find something lovely to look at or listen to," said Anne.
They talked of "cabbages and kings," and hitched their wagons to stars, and came home with appetites that taxed even the Green Gables pantry. One day it stormed and they couldn't go out. The east wind was beating around the eaves and the gray gulf was roaring. But even a storm at Green Gables had charms of its own. It was cozy to sit by the stove and dreamily watch the firelight flickering over the ceiling while you munched apples and candy. How jolly supper was with the storm wailing outside!
One night Gilbert took them to see Diana and her new baby daughter.
"I never held a baby in my life before," said Katherine as they drove home. "For one thing, I didn't want to, and for another I'd have been afraid of it going to pieces in my grasp. You can't imagine how I felt . . . so big and clumsy with that tiny, exquisite thing in my arms. I know Mrs. Wright thought I was going to drop it every minute. I could see her striving heroically to conceal her terror. But it did something to me . . . the baby I mean . . . I haven't decided just what."
"Babies are such fascinating creatures," said Anne dreamily. "They are what I heard somebody at Redmond call 'terrific bundles of potentialities.' Think of it, Katherine . . . Homer must have been a baby once . . . a baby with dimples and great eyes full of light . . . he couldn't have been blind then, of course."
"What a pity his mother didn't know he was to be Homer," said Katherine.
"But I think I'm glad Judas' mother didn't know he was to be Judas," said Anne softly. "I hope she never did know."
There was a concert in the hall one night, with a party at Abner Sloane's after it, and Anne persuaded Katherine to go to both.
"I want you to give us a reading for our program, Katherine. I've heard you read beautifully."
"I used to recite . . . I think I rather liked doing it. But the summer before last I recited at a shore concert which a party of summer resorters got up . . . and I heard them laughing at me afterwards."
"How do you know they were laughing at you?"
"They must have been. There wasn't anything else to laugh at."
Anne hid a smile and persisted in asking for the reading.
"Give Genevra for an encore. I'm told you do that splendidly. Mrs. Stephen Pringle told me she never slept a wink the night after she heard you give it."
"No; I've never liked Genevra. It's in the reading, so I try occasionally to show the class how to read it. I really have no patience with Genevra. Why didn't she scream when she found herself locked in? When they were hunting everywhere for her, surely somebody would have heard her."
Katherine finally promised the reading but was dubious about the party. "I'll go, of course. But nobody will ask me to dance and I'll feel sarcastic and prejudiced and ashamed. I'm always miserable at parties . . . the few I've ever gone to. Nobody seems to think I can dance . . . and you know I can fairly well, Anne. I picked it up at Uncle Henry's, because a poor bit of a maid they had wanted to learn, too, and she and I used to dance together in the kitchen at night to the music that went on in the parlor. I think I'd like it . . . with the right kind of partner."
"You won't be miserable at this party, Katherine. You won't be outside looking in. There's all the difference in the world, you know, between being inside looking out and outside looking in. You have such lovely hair, Katherine. Do you mind if I try a new way of doing it?"
Katherine shrugged.
"Oh, go ahead. I suppose my hair does look dreadful . . . but I've no time to be always primping. I
haven't a party dress. Will my green taffeta do?"
"It will have to do . . . though green is the one color above all others that you should never wear, my Katherine. But you're going to wear a red, pin-tucked chiffon collar I've made for you. Yes, you are. You ought to have a red dress, Katherine."
"I've always hated red. When I went to live with Uncle Henry, Aunt Gertrude always made me wear aprons of bright Turkey-red. The other children in school used to call out 'Fire,' when I came in with one of those aprons on. Anyway, I can't be bothered with clothes."
"Heaven grant me patience! Clothes are very important," said Anne severely, as she braided and coiled. Then she looked at her work and saw that it was good. She put her arm about Katherine's shoulders and turned her to the mirror.
"Don't you truly think we are a pair of quite good-looking girls?" she laughed. "And isn't it really nice to think people will find some pleasure in looking at us? There are so many homely people who would actually look quite attractive if they took a little pains with themselves. Three Sundays ago in church . . . you remember the day poor old Mr. Milvain preached and had such a terrible cold in his head that nobody could make out what he was saying? . . . well, I passed the time making the people around me beautiful. I gave Mrs. Brent a new nose, I waved Mary Addison's hair and gave Jane Marden's a lemon rinse . . . I dressed Emma Dill in blue instead of brown . . . I dressed Charlotte Blair in stripes instead of checks . . . I removed several moles . . . and I shaved off Thomas Anderson's long, sandy Piccadilly weepers. You couldn't have known them when I got through with them. And, except perhaps for Mrs. Brent's nose, they could have done everything I did, themselves. Why, Katherine, your eyes are just the color of tea . . . amber tea. Now, live up to your name this evening . . . a brook should be sparkling . . . limpid . . . merry."
"Everything I'm not."
"Everything you've been this past week. So you can be it."
"That's only the magic of Green Gables. When I go back to Summerside, twelve o'clock will have struck for Cinderella."
"You'll take the magic back with you. Look at yourself . . . looking for once as you ought to look all the time."
Katherine gazed at her reflection in the mirror as if rather doubting her identity.
"I do look years younger," she admitted. "You were right . . . clothes do do things to you. Oh, I know I've been looking older than my age. I didn't care. Why should I? Nobody else cared. And I'm not like you, Anne. Apparently you were born knowing how to live. And I don't know anything about it . . . not even the A B C. I wonder if it's too late to learn. I've been sarcastic so long, I don't know if I can be anything else. Sarcasm seemed to me to be the only way I could
make any impression on people. And it seems to me, too, that I've always been afraid when I was in the company of other people . . . afraid of saying something stupid . . . afraid of being laughed at."
"Katherine Brooke, look at yourself in that mirror; carry that picture of yourself with you . . . magnificent hair framing your face instead of trying to pull it backward . . . eyes sparkling like dark stars . . . a little flush of excitement on your cheeks . . . and you won't feel afraid. Come, now. We're going to be late, but fortunately all the performers have what I heard Dora referring to as 'preserved' seats."
Gilbert drove them to the hall. How like old times it was . . . only Katherine was with her in place of Diana. Anne sighed. Diana had so many other interests now. No more running round to concerts and parties for her.
But what an evening it was! What silvery satin roads with a pale green sky in the west after a light snowfall! Orion was treading his stately march across the heavens, and hills and fields and woods lay around them in a pearly silence.
Katherine's reading captured her audience from the first line, and at the party she could not find dances for all her would-be partners. She suddenly found herself laughing without bitterness. Then home to Green Gables, warming their toes at the sitting-room fire by the light of two friendly candles on the mantel; and Mrs. Lynde tiptoeing into their room, late as it was, to ask them if they'd like another blanket and assure Katherine that her little dog was snug and warm in a basket behind the kitchen stove.
"I've got a new outlook on life," thought Katherine as she drifted off to slumber. "I didn't know there were people like this."
"Come again," said Marilla when she left.
Marilla never said that to any one unless she meant it.
"Of course she's coming again," said Anne. "For weekends . . . and for weeks in the summer. We'll build bonfires and hoe in the garden . . . and pick apples and go for the cows . . . and row on the pond and get lost in the woods. I want to show you Little Hester Gray's garden, Katherine, and Echo Lodge and Violet Vale when it's full of violets."
